Sony offers UMD owners small consolation on PS Vita

Mike Luttrell, 11th November 2011

If you have a huge library of physical UMD games for your PSP, Sony is prepared to offer you a deal...kind of.

The Playstation Vita will offer users a special "UMD Passport" app, which will allow users to register their physical media-based games to their Playstation account.

You would think, then, that Sony would offer you the option of downloading a free digital version of the game for your PS Vita.

If that's what you thought, you're close. Sony will in fact recognize that you bought the game and will link you to the digital version, but says it will only offer you a discount on buying the digital copy.

Meanwhile, gamers who purchased the digital version from the beginning continue to be able to download the game as many times as they want on up to three different devices.

When Sony launched the PSPgo, a digital-only version of the PSP that nixed the UMD drive, gamers were reluctant to buy it because it would render their UMD collection pointless.

That's a factor - albeit one of many - as to why the PSPgo was by all accounts an unmitigated flop.

So with the Vita, at least Sony is doing something to address the concerns of backward compatibility. But it's likely to still leave a sour taste in the mouths of anyone who chose a retail copy over a digital copy.